In hospitals, clinics and other environments in which ill patients are routinely examined and treated, medical practitioners contaminate a host of devices such as needles, syringes, tubing, and scalpels with boood and other bodily fluids. This is often done when feeding patients, drawing blood, vaccinating and otherwise inoculating. Quite often, patients' bodily fluids are infected with pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungi and other matter. This potential source of pathogenicity has become acute with the knowledge and identification of certain pathogens such a hepatitis B and the AIDS virus, among other deadly and infectious materials.
These pathogenetic materials are potentially a source of infection for doctors, nurses, aides, orderlies, technicians, and even to visitors to the hospital or clinic, as well as to the patients themselves. The various devices infected must thus be contained and/or destroyed.
Currently, infectious waste, called "sharps", is generally disposed of by insertion of the infected material into a hard plastic container. These containers are then removed by housekeeping personnel and sent to a site for bagging and storage. After bagging, the containers are often stored or removed to yet another site for sterilization. Even when closed, locked and bagged, the containers are not airtight, and thus can potentially spill and contaminate the atmosphere. Handling of the waste containers by housekeeping personnel often results in infected needles penetrating the storage containers, thus providing a potentially dangerous condition for housekeeping personnel.
Following sterilization, the contaminated material is often removed to another location for incineration. After sterilization, the contaminated waste disposal containers resemble, and are often referred to as, "porcupines" because the often used plastic containers shrink around the needle and other devices when heated in an autoclave or similar device, resulting in needle exposure through the sides of the containers. In this condition, the containers are indeed quite dangerous to handle, whether or not they remain the housing for infectious devices.
In addition to the above-recited difficulties, current state of the art disposal techniques are further flawed in the use of so-called "anti-removal" or anti-theft"containers. Infectious devices are often put into plastic containers which contain guards for preventing needle retrieval. However, it is relatively easy to reach into such a container and retrieve the "sharps". As such, current disposal methods do not render the needles and sharps irretrievable and unstable at the point of disposal.
One of the most serious deficiencies with current disposal methods is that they do not prevent the aerosoling or spilling of infectious materials into the ambient atmosphere, thus potentially causing the spread of infectious germs, bacteria, fungi and viral fragments. Current containers are not air-tight, even when they are eventually closed and locked.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a superior method for containing potential infectious devices which overcomes the difficulties recited above.